Blog is all about words because they matter, they influence, they entertain and when you put them down on a page in a meaningful order, they acquire permanence. Contained here are a bunch of written words in the form of book reviews, magazine and web article links & summaries and other stuff I like to write about. Currently aiming to read and write on two books a month.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Joe Posnanski Piece on Rafer Johnson

Found myself to be pretty well riveted by a recent Joe Posnanski blog post on Olympic Decathlete Rafer Johnson. Titled Stories of an Extraordinary Life, the piece details how Johnson was much more than simply an amazing athlete.

Confidant of Bobby Kennedy (and person who wrestled the guy from Sirhan Sirhan), UCLA basketball player under John Wooden, supporter of Special Olympics, close friend of Muhammad Ali and lighter of the 1984 Summer Olympic torch... Johnson has in fact led a life described well by Posnanski.

Just a great piece of writing by Posnaski... who I've linked to a number of times here, with the most interesting and profound (to myself, at least) story being "The Quisenberry Tree" linked to in this post.